Podcasts about mountain village

Colorado legislators pass SB25-276 to protect immigrants, two ballot initiatives this fall will ask the state's voters about additional funding for school meals, the unofficial results from the Telluride Hospital District election are in, and trash truck catches fire near Mountain Village.

-El Ayuntamiento de Telluride expresa su preocupación por el liderazgo de Telski -Radio Esperanza -Casillero Dew en Mountain Village

Telluride Ski Resort owner Chuck Horning comes under fire from local officials, lawsuit over gondola ballot issue 3A is headed to trial, San Miguel County Public Health receives stop work order as federal funding is cut, Mountain Village receives grant funding for wildfire mitigation, and a big snowstorm caps off the 2024-2025 season.

-Mountain Village y Telski se enfrentan -Cinco años de COVID-19 -Hurd presenta la Ley de Tierras Públicas Productivas

Mountain Village questions Telluride Ski Resort owner Chuck Horning's ability to lead as the council condemns a section of resort land for concert easement and looks at a lift ticket tax to enable the resort's promised contributions to gondola operations, Colorado is facing a $1.2 billion budget shortfall, Mountain Village presents feasibility study for regional wastewater treatment facility, and Telluride puts its first all-electric Galloping Goose bus on the loose.

Today, Sun outdoors reporter Jason Blevins breaks down the simmer frustrations with the Telluride ski area owner and his pushback against the Town of Mountain Village, which may use eminent domain for some of his land.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

- Mountain Village and Telski Go To Battle - Mining Sees More Regulation in San Miguel County - Public Health Encourages Measles Vaccination

- Wildfire risks in the modern world - Mountain Village moves to increase Town Council compensation - Cat Movie Fisher with Risho Unda

George grew up in Mountain Village, Alaska where life can be pretty rugged. One day, while he was out on his snow machine he got caught in a storm. He got lost and, eventually, his snowmobile ran out of gas. This could be a deadly situation. Should he abandon his snow machine or stay put?

-New District Attorney sifts through problems -Mountain Village considers Town Council compensation -West End reimagines Dolores River conservation

Fluent Fiction - Mandarin Chinese: Finding Home: Love and Tradition in a Mountain Village Find the full episode transcript, vocabulary words, and more:fluentfiction.com/zh/episode/2025-01-11-08-38-19-zh Story Transcript:Zh: 村子四面环山，冬天的冷风总是从山上吹来，带来一片清冷。En: The village is surrounded by mountains, and in winter, the cold wind always blows down from the mountains, bringing a chill.Zh: 红灯笼高高挂起，把整个村子装点得喜气洋洋，准备迎接即将到来的春节。En: Red lanterns are hung high, decorating the entire village with a festive atmosphere as they prepare to welcome the upcoming Spring Festival.Zh: 这里的人们正忙着布置村里的广场，准备一场盛大的春节庆典。En: The people here are busy arranging the village square in preparation for a grand Spring Festival celebration.Zh: 玲是一个安静思考的年轻人。En: Ling is a quiet and thoughtful young person.Zh: 他刚从城市学习回来，心里渴望一个可以属于他的地方。En: Having just returned from studying in the city, he longs for a place he can belong to.Zh: 但在这山村，他总觉得像个局外人。En: Yet, in this mountain village, he always feels like an outsider.Zh: 梅，是一位热情的女子，她深爱着村子的传统，想通过这次节日将她已逝祖母的遗产发扬光大。En: Mei is a passionate woman who deeply loves the village's traditions and wants to honor her late grandmother's legacy through this festival.Zh: 这一天，玲走过村子，看见梅在广场忙碌。En: One day, Ling walked through the village and saw Mei busy in the square.Zh: 梅正在和村人协调装饰，非常忙碌。En: Mei was coordinating decorations with the villagers and was very busy.Zh: 见玲站在不远处，她脸上露出微笑：“玲，你回来得正好，可以帮忙吗？”En: Seeing Ling standing not far away, she smiled and said, "Ling, you're back just in time. Can you help us?"Zh: 玲犹豫一会儿，点了点头。En: Ling hesitated for a moment and then nodded.Zh: 他开始帮忙挂灯笼，尽管一开始并不熟练，但他努力去尽力而为。En: He began helping to hang lanterns.Zh: 尽管一开始并不熟练，但他努力去尽力而为。En: Although he wasn't very skilled at first, he tried his best.Zh: 村里的朋友建一直在观察着这一切。En: Their mutual friend, Jian, was observing everything.Zh: 建是他们俩个的好友，常在他们之间调和空气。En: Jian was a friend of both and often helped to balance the air between them.Zh: 他知道玲的内心，也了解梅的期望。En: He understood Ling's inner world and knew Mei's aspirations.Zh: 日子一天天过去，梅渐渐感到压力，庆典的筹备让她疲惫不堪。En: As days passed, Mei began to feel the pressure, becoming exhausted from the festival preparations.Zh: 建看出了她的烦恼，提议把一部分任务交给其他村人，梅终于同意了。En: Jian noticed her distress and suggested delegating some tasks to other villagers, and Mei finally agreed.Zh: 这样一来，她能有更多时间与玲接触。En: This way, she could have more time to spend with Ling.Zh: 除夕夜，村子沉浸在灯光与烟火之中。En: On New Year's Eve, the village was immersed in lights and fireworks.Zh: 玲和梅一起坐在挂满红灯笼的树下。En: Ling and Mei sat together under a tree adorned with red lanterns.Zh: 周围是喜庆的欢笑声和炮竹的轰鸣。En: Surrounding them were the joyous sounds of laughter and the booming of firecrackers.Zh: 梅轻声说：“谢谢你，玲。你的帮助让我感觉轻松很多。”En: Mei said softly, "Thank you, Ling. Your help has made things much easier for me."Zh: 玲终于开口，分享了他内心深处的感受：“刚回来时，我觉得自己像个外人。现在，我觉得这里有了我的一部分，也是因为你。”En: Ling finally spoke, sharing his deepest feelings: "When I first came back, I felt like an outsider. Now, I feel like a part of this place, thanks to you."Zh: 梅笑了，心中温暖。En: Mei smiled, warmth filling her heart.Zh: 她轻声说道：“你在这里是我的伙伴，不仅是为了这个节日，更是因为我们都爱这个村子。”En: She softly said, "You're my partner here, not only for this festival but because we both love this village."Zh: 当夜色渐深，烟花在天空中绽放，光芒把他们的脸庞映得清晰。En: As the night deepened, fireworks blossomed in the sky, illuminating their faces.Zh: 他们的心也在这一刻贴近，不再有所保留。En: Their hearts drew close at this moment, leaving nothing unsaid.Zh: 春节庆典圆满结束，梅成功地继承了祖母的遗愿，村里的每个人都感受到了浓烈的节日气氛。En: The Spring Festival celebration ended successfully, and Mei fulfilled her grandmother's wish.Zh: 村里的每个人都感受到了浓烈的节日气氛。En: Everyone in the village felt the intense festive spirit.Zh: 而玲终于找到家一样的感觉，在这个小山村中，他找到属于自己的位置。En: And Ling finally found a sense of belonging, finding his place in this small mountain village. Vocabulary Words:surrounded: 环山chill: 清冷festive: 喜气洋洋atmosphere: 气氛arranging: 布置grand: 盛大的celebration: 庆典thoughtful: 思考belong: 属于outsider: 局外人passionate: 热情legacy: 遗产coordinating: 协调observing: 观察balance: 调和aspirations: 期望exhausted: 疲惫distress: 烦恼delegating: 交给immersed: 沉浸adorned: 挂满laughter: 欢笑firecrackers: 炮竹illuminating: 映得fulfill: 继承intense: 浓烈belonging: 位置deepened: 渐深blossomed: 绽放unspoken: 不再有所保留

- Mechanical failure forces ski lift evacuation - Telluride welcomes new director of historic preservation - Menorah lighting illuminates Mountain Village

- Bluegrass announces initial 2025 lineup - Mountain Village tentatively expands housing assistance program - Public land conflicts in western San Miguel County

-Mountain Village fija los precios de los alquileres de VCA para 2025 -Montrose se conecta a SMART -Norwood finaliza su presupuesto para 2025

- Placerville community speaks up - Mountain Village debriefs on Meadowlark and VCA housing -Celebrating 10 years of The Downlow

- Norwood Trustees finalize 2025 budget - Mountain Village addresses Ilium housing questions - Telluride moves to ban puppy mills

- Mountain Village sets VCA rents for 2025 - Norwood Water Commission finds funding - Radio Book Club has the next chapter

-Mountain Village considera una estructura de alquiler por niveles para VCA -Vuelve el estacionamiento pagado a Mountain Village -Nuevos deportes en Telluride High School

- Mountain Village considers “Commercial Vacancy Tax” - Healthy Kids Colorado Survey provides insight into Telluride's young community - Holidays at the Telluride Post Office

- Mountain Village considers tiered rent structure for VCA - Amidst fire, community in Nucla burns bright - Telluride's tofu turkey the first of its kind

-Mountain Village habla sobre la estructura de alquiler en VCA -Telluride Fundación quiere apoyar a los compradores de vivienda por primera vez -Celebration del día de los muertos

- Mountain Village talks rent structure at VCA - Strong Start looks to fill the gaps on early child education - Radio Book Club has the next chapter

- El condado apoya a las organizaciones sin fines de lucro de la zona en 2025 - Mountain Village trabaja en la prevención de incendios - Un jardín comunitario florece con motivo del Mes de Concienciación sobre la Violencia Doméstica

- County discusses rural land use - Mountain Village works on fire mitigation - Extension director retires

-Las fuerzas del orden responden a un informe de posible arma de fuego en el High School de Telluride -Norwood votará sobre 2 importantes iniciativas electorales este otoño -Mountain Village aprueba las tarifas de estacionamiento de invierno

- The West End plans for the future - Mountain Village denies 5G proposal - A community garden blooms for Domestic Violence Awareness Month

- Telluride discusses sending two housing units to lottery - Mountain Village talks water infrastructure replacements - Walk for Hope looks for light in the darkness

- Discussions on Norwood Fire Protection District mill levy heat up - Mountain Village approves winter parking rates - 2024 Pinterns to present

- Mountain Village talks 2025 budget - Homeowners and communities prepare for wildfire - GMUG finalizes Blue Lakes Management Plan

- Towns pledge collaboration on wastewater - Mountain Village shakes of cedar shingles - Trio Duende brings long form music

- El alcalde de Norwood se enfrenta a la destitución - La comunidad comparte su preocupación por la política de alquiler de viviendas - Mountain Village muestra su apoyo a un lugar para jóvenes

- Telluride on track with 2024 goals - Mountain Village considers Youth Hangout funding - Love and loss with “Love Letters to Vincent”

- Mountain Village sends question on voting eligibility to the ballot - SMART discusses expanded service - Club works on trails: short and long term

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- County appeals latest ruling on Diamond Ridge - New app aims to add equity to emergency alerts - Mountain Village finds sustainability inspiration abroad

-Los votantes de Mountain Village decidirán si permiten votar a las compañías -Dan Enright permanecerá en la Autoridad de Vivienda después de la queja ética -Youth Hangout se prepara para la inauguración en Telluride

- Mountain Village voters to decide on allowing LLCs to vote - Scott Robson says goodbye - G is for Government previews Telluride Town Council

-Tras un largo y emotivo proceso, el Condado aprueba el Plan de East End -Telluride habla de niveles -Mountain Village organiza una sesión de trabajo para debatir la elegibilidad para votar

This podcast hit paid subscribers' inboxes on June 10. It dropped for free subscribers on June 17. To receive future pods as soon as they're live, and to support independent ski journalism, please consider an upgrade to a paid subscription. You can also subscribe to the free tier below:WhoBelinda Trembath, Vice President & Chief Operating Officer of Whistler Blackcomb, British ColumbiaRecorded onJune 3, 2024About Whistler BlackcombClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: Vail Resorts (majority owners; Nippon Cable owns a 25 percent stake in Whistler Blackcomb)Located in: Whistler, British ColumbiaYear founded: 1966Pass affiliations:* Epic Pass: unlimited* Epic Local Pass: 10 holiday-restricted days, shared with Vail Mountain and Beaver CreekClosest neighboring ski areas: Grouse Mountain (1:26), Cypress (1:30), Mt. Seymour (1:50) – travel times vary based upon weather conditions, time of day, and time of yearBase elevation: 2,214 feet (675 meters)Summit elevation: 7,497 feet (2,284 meters)Vertical drop: 5,283 feet (1,609 meters)Skiable Acres: 8,171Average annual snowfall: 408 inches (1,036 centimeters)Trail count: 276 (20% easiest, 50% more difficult, 30% most difficult)Lift count: A lot (1 28-passenger gondola, 3 10-passenger gondolas, 1 8-passenger gondola, 1 8-passenger pulse gondola, 8 high-speed quads, 4 six-packs, 1 eight-pack, 3 triples, 2 T-bars, 7 carpets – view Lift Blog's inventory of Whistler Blackcomb's lift fleet) – inventory includes upgrade of Jersey Cream Express from a quad to a six-pack for the 2024-25 ski season.Why I interviewed herHistorical records claim that when Lewis and Clark voyaged west in 1804, they were seeking “the most direct and practicable water communication across this continent, for the purposes of commerce.” But they were actually looking for Whistler Blackcomb.Or at least I think they were. What other reason is there to go west but to seek out these fabulous mountains, rising side by side and a mile* into the sky, where Pacific blow-off splinters into summit blizzards and packed humanity animates the village below?There is nothing else like Whistler in North America. It is our most complete, and our greatest, ski resort. Where else does one encounter this collision of terrain, vertical, panorama, variety, and walkable life, interconnected with audacious aerial lifts and charged by a pilgrim-like massing of skiers from every piece and part of the world? Europe and nowhere else. Except for here.Other North American ski resorts offer some of these things, and some of them offer better versions of them than Whistler. But none of them has all of them, and those that have versions of each fail to combine them all so fluidly. There is no better snow than Alta-Snowbird snow, but there is no substantive walkable village. There is no better lift than Jackson's tram, but the inbounds terrain lacks scale and the town is miles away. There is no better energy than Palisades Tahoe energy, but the Pony Express is still carrying news of its existence out of California.Once you've skied Whistler – or, more precisely, absorbed it and been absorbed by it – every other ski area becomes Not Whistler. The place lingers. You carry it around. Place it into every ski conversation. “Have you been to Whistler?” If not, you try to describe it. But it can't be done. “Just go,” you say, and that's as close as most of us can come to grabbing the raw power of the place.*Or 1.6 Canadian Miles (sometimes referred to as “kilometers”).What we talked aboutWhy skier visits dropped at Whistler-Blackcomb this past winter; the new Fitzsimmons eight-passenger express and what it took to modify a lift that had originally been intended for Park City; why skiers can often walk onto that lift with little to no wait; this summer's Jersey Cream lift upgrade; why Jersey Cream didn't require as many modifications as Fitzsimmons even though it was also meant for Park City; the complexity of installing a mid-mountain lift; why WB had to cancel 2024 summer skiing and what that means for future summer seasons; could we see a gondola serving the glacier instead?; Vail's Australian trio of Mt. Hotham, Perisher, and Falls Creek; Whistler's wild weather; the distinct identities of Blackcomb and Whistler; what WB means to Vail Resorts; WB's Olympic legacy; Whistler's surprisingly low base elevation and what that means for the visitor; WB's relationship with local First Nations; priorities for future lift upgrades and potential changes to the Whistler gondola, Seventh Heaven, Whistler T-bar, Franz's, Garbanzo; discussing proposed additional lifts in Symphony Bowl and elsewhere on Whistler; potential expansion into a fourth portal; potential new or upgraded lifts sketched out in Blackcomb Mountain's masterplan; why WB de-commissioned the Hortsman T-Bar; missing the Wizard-to-Solar-Coaster access that the Blackcomb Gondola replaced; WB's amazing self-managing lift mazes; My Epic App direct-to-lift access is coming to Whistler; employee housing; why Whistler's season pass costs more than an Epic Pass; and Edge cards.   Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewFour new major lifts in three years; the cancellation of summer skiing; “materially lower” skier visits at Whistler this past winter, as reported by Vail Resorts – all good topics, all enough to justify a check-in. Oh and the fact that Whistler Blackcomb is the largest ski area in the Western Hemisphere, the crown jewel in Vail's sprawling portfolio, the single most important ski area on the continent.And why is that? What makes this place so special? The answer lies only partly in its bigness. Whistler is vast. Whistler is thrilling. Whistler is everything you hope a ski area will be when you plan your winter vacation. But most important of all is that Whistler is proof.Proof that such a place can exist in North America. U.S. America is stuck in a development cycle that typically goes like this:* Ski area proposes a new expansion/base area development/chairlift/snowmaking upgrade.* A small group of locals picks up the pitchforks because Think of the Raccoons/this will gut the character of our bucolic community of car-dependent sprawl/this will disrupt one very specific thing that is part of my personal routine that heavens me I just can't give up.* Said group files a lawsuit/formal objection/some other bureaucratic obstacle, halting the project.* Resort justifies the project/adapts it to meet locals' concerns/makes additional concessions in the form of land swaps, operational adjustments, infrastructure placement, and the like.* Group insists upon maximalist stance of Do Nothing.* Resort makes additional adjustments.* Group is Still Mad* Cycle repeats for years* Either nothing ever gets done, or the project is built 10 to 15 years after its reveal and at considerable extra expense in the form of studies, legal fees, rising materials and labor costs, and expensive and elaborate modifications to accommodate one very specific thing, like you can't operate the lift from May 1 to April 20 because that would disrupt the seahorse migration between the North and South Poles.In BC, they do things differently. I've covered this extensively, in podcast conversations with the leaders of Sun Peaks, Red Mountain, and Panorama. The civic and bureaucratic structures are designed to promote and encourage targeted, smart development, leading to ever-expanding ski areas, human-scaled and walkable base area infrastructure, and plenty of slopeside or slope-adjacent accommodations.I won't exhaust that narrative again here. I bring it up only to say this: Whistler has done all of these things at a baffling scale. A large, vibrant, car-free pedestrian village where people live and work. A gargantuan lift across an unbridgeable valley. Constant infrastructure upgrades. Reliable mass transit. These things can be done. Whistler is proof.That BC sits directly atop Washington State, where ski areas have to spend 15 years proving that installing a stop sign won't undermine the 17-year cicada hatching cycle, is instructive. Whistler couldn't exist 80 miles south. Maybe the ski area, but never the village. And why not? Such communities, so concentrated, require a small footprint in comparison to the sprawl of a typical development of single-family homes. Whistler's pedestrian base village occupies an area around a half mile long and less than a quarter mile wide. And yet, because it is a walkable, mixed-use space, it cuts down reliance on driving, enlivens the ski area, and energizes the soul. It is proof that human-built spaces, properly conceived, can create something worthwhile in what, 50 years ago, was raw wilderness, even if they replace a small part of the natural world.A note from Whistler on First NationsTrembath and I discuss Whistler's relationship with First Nations extensively, but her team sent me some follow-up information to clarify their role in the mountain's development:Belinda didn't really have time to dive into a very important piece of the First Nations involvement in the operational side of things:* There was significant engagement with First Nations as a part of developing the masterplans.* Their involvement and support were critical to the approval of the masterplans and to ensuring that all parties and their respective communities will benefit from the next 60 years of operation.* This includes the economic prosperity of First Nations – both the Squamish and Líl̓wat Nations will participate in operational success as partners.* To ensure this, the Province of British Columbia, the Resort Municipality of Whistler, Whistler Blackcomb and the Squamish and Líl̓wat Nations are engaged in agreements on how to work together in the future.* These agreements, known as the Umbrella Agreement, run concurrently with the Master Development Agreements and masterplans, providing a road map for our relationship with First Nations over the next 60 years of operations and development. * Key requirements include Revenue Sharing, Real Estate Development, Employment, Contracting & Recreational Opportunities, Marketing and Tourism and Employee Housing. There is an Implementation Committee, which oversees the execution of the agreement. * This is a landmark agreement and the only one of its kind within the mountain resort industry.What we got wrongI mentioned that “I'd never seen anything like” the lift mazes at Whistler, but that's not quite accurate. Vail Resorts deploys similar setups throughout its western portfolio. What I hadn't seen before is such choreographed and consistent navigation of these mazes by the skiers themselves. To watch a 500-person liftline squeeze itself into one loading ramp with no personnel direction or signage, and to watch nearly every chair lift off fully loaded, is to believe, at least for seven to nine minutes, in humanity as a worthwhile ongoing experiment.I said that Edge Cards were available for up to six days of skiing. They're actually available in two-, five-, or 10-day versions. If you're not familiar with Edge cards, it's because they're only available to residents of Canada and Washington State.Whistler officials clarified the mountain's spring skiing dates, which Trembath said started on May 14. The actual dates were April 15 to May 20.Why you should ski Whistler BlackcombYou know that thing you do where you step outside and you can breathe as though you didn't just remove your space helmet on the surface of Mars? You can do that at Whistler too. The village base elevation is 2,214 feet. For comparison's sake: Salt Lake City's airport sits at 4,227 feet; Denver's is at 5,434. It only goes up from there. The first chairlifts sit at 6,800 feet in Park City; 8,100 at Snowbird; 8,120 at Vail; 8,530 at Alta; 8,750 at Brighton; 9,000 at Winter Park; 9,280 at Keystone; 9,600 at Breckenridge; 9,712 at Copper Mountain; and an incredible 10,780 feet at Arapahoe Basin. Taos sits at 9,200 feet. Telluride at 8,750. Adaptation can be brutal when parachuting in from sea level, or some nominal inland elevation above it, as most of us do. At 8,500 feet, I get winded searching my hotel room for a power outlet, let alone skiing, until my body adjusts to the thinner air. That Whistler requires no such reconfiguration of your atomic structure to do things like blink and speak is one of the more underrated features of the place.Another underrated feature: Whistler Blackcomb is a fantastic family mountain. While Whistler is a flip-doodle factory of Stoke Brahs every bit the equal of Snowbird or Jackson Hole, it is not Snowbird or Jackson Hole. Which is to say, the place offers beginner runs that are more than across-the-fall line cat tracks and 300-vertical-foot beginner pods. While it's not promoted like the celebrated Peak-to-Creek route, a green trail (or sequence of them), runs nearly 5,000 uninterrupted vertical feet from Whistler's summit to the base village. In fact, with the exception of Blackcomb's Glacier Express, every one of the ski area's 16 chairlifts (even the fearsome Peak Express), and five gondolas offers a beginner route that you can ski all the way back to the base. Yes, some of them shuffle into narrow cat tracks for stretches, but mostly these are wide, approachable trails, endless and effortless, built, it seems, for ski-family safaris of the confidence-building sort.Those are maybe the things you're not thinking of. The skiing:Most skiers start with one of the three out-of-base village gondolas, but the new Fitz eight-seater rarely has a line. Start there:That's mostly a transit lift. At the top, head up the Garbanzo quad, where you can start to understand the scale of the thing:You're still not quite to the goods. But to get a sense of the mountain, ski down to Big Red:This will take you to Whistler's main upper-mountain portal, Roundhouse. From Whistler, you can see Blackcomb strafing the sky:From Roundhouse, it's a short ski down to the Peak Express:Depending upon your route down, you may end up back at Big Red. Ride back up to Roundhouse, then meander from Emerald to Harmony to Symphony lifts. For a moment on the way down Symphony, it feels like Euroski:Just about everyone sticks to the narrow groomers:But there are plenty of bumps and trees and wide-open bowls:Nice as this terrain is, the Peak 2 Peak Gondola summons you from all over the mountain:Whoosh. To Blackcomb in an instant, crossing the valley, 1,427 feet to the bottom, and out at Blackcomb's upper-mountain base, Rendezvous. Down to Glacier Express, and up a rolling fantasyland of infinite freeride terrain:And at the top it's like damn.From here, you can transfer to the Showcase T-bar if it's open. If not, climb Spanky's Ladder, and, Kaboom out on the other side:Ride Crystal Ridge or Excelerator back up, and run a lap through bowls and glades:Then ski back down to the village, ride Jersey Cream back to Rendezvous to connect to the spectacular 7th Heaven lift, or ride the gondy back over to Whistler to repeat the whole cycle. And that's just a sampling. I'm no Whistler expert - just go have fun and get lost in the whole thing.Podcast NotesOn the Lost Lifts of Park CityIt's slightly weird and enormously hilarious that the Fitzsimmons eight-seater that Whistler installed last summer and the Jersey Cream sixer that Blackcomb will drop on the mountain this year were originally intended for Park City. As I wrote in 2022:Last September, Vail Resorts announced what was likely the largest set of single-season lift upgrades in the history of the world: $315-plus million on 19 lifts (later increased to 21 lifts) across 14 ski areas. Two of those lifts would land in Park City: a D-line eight-pack would replace the Silverlode six, and a six-pack would replace the Eagle and Eaglet triples. Two more lifts in a town with 62 of them (Park City sits right next door to Deer Valley). Surely this would be another routine project for the world's largest ski area operator.It wasn't. In June, four local residents – Clive Bush, Angela Moschetta, Deborah Rentfrow, and Mark Stemler – successfully appealed the Park City Planning Commission's previous approval of the lift projects.“The upgrades were appealed on the basis that the proposed eight-place and six-place chairs were not consistent with the 1998 development agreement that governs the resort,” SAM wrote at the time. “The planning commission also cited the need for a more thorough review of the resort's comfortable carrying capacity calculations and parking mitigation plan, finding PCM's proposed paid parking plan at the Mountain Village insufficient.”So instead of rising on the mountain, the lifts spent the summer, in pieces, in the parking lot. Vail admitted defeat, at least temporarily. “We are considering our options and next steps based on today's disappointing decision—but one thing is clear—we will not be able to move forward with these two lift upgrades for the 22-23 winter season,” Park City Mountain Resort Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Deirdra Walsh said in response to the decision.One of the options Vail apparently considered was trucking the lifts to friendlier locales. Last Wednesday, as part of its year-end earnings release, Vail announced that the two lifts would be moved to Whistler and installed in time for the 2023-24 ski season. The eight-pack will replace the 1,129-vertical-foot Fitzsimmons high-speed quad on Whistler, giving the mountain 18 seats (!) out of the village (the lift runs alongside the 10-passenger Whistler Village Gondola). The six-pack will replace the Jersey Cream high-speed quad on Blackcomb, a midmountain lift with a 1,230-foot vertical rise.The whole episode is still one of the dumber things I'm aware of. There are like 80 lifts in Park City and two more (replacements, not all-new lines), apparently would have knocked the planet off its axis and sent us caterwauling into the sun. It's enough to make you un-see all the human goodness in Whistler's magical lift queues. More here.On Fitzsimmons 8's complex lineAmong the challenges of re-engineering the Fitzsimmons 8 for Whistler was the fact that the lift had to pass under the Whistler Village Gondola:Trembath and I talk a little about Fitz's download capability. Team Whistler sent over some additional information following our chat, indicating that the winter download capacity is four riders per chair (part of the original lift design, when it was meant for Park City). Summer download, for bike park operations, is limited to one passenger (a lower capacity than the original design).On Whistler's bike parkI'm not Bike Park Bro, though I could probably be talked into it fairly easily if I didn't already spend half the year wandering around the country in search of novel snowsportskiing operations. I do, however, ride my bike around NYC just about every day from May through October-ish, which in many ways resembles the giant jungle gyms that are downhill mountain bike parks, just with fewer jumps and a higher probability of decapitation by box truck.Anyway Whistler supposedly has the best bike park this side of Neptune, and we talk about it a bit, and so I'll include the trailmap even though I'd have a better chance of translating ancient Aramaic runes etched into a cave wall than I would of explaining exactly what's happening here:On Jersey Cream “not looking like much” on the trailmapBecause Whistler's online trailmap is shrunken to fit the same rectangular container that every ski map fills in the Webosphere, it fails to convey the scale of the operation (the paper version, which you can acquire if you slip a bag of gold bars and a map to the Lost City of Atlantis to a clerk at the guest services desk, is aptly called a “mountain atlas” and better captures the breadth of the place). The Jersey Cream lift and pod, for example, presents on the trailmap as an inconsequential connector lift between the Glacier Express and Rendezous station, where three other lifts convene. But this is a 1,230-vertical-foot, 4,647-foot-long machine that could, were you to hack it from the earth and transport it into the wilderness, be a fairly substantial ski area on its own. For context, 1,200 vertical feet is roughly the rise of Eldora or Monarch, or, for Easterners, Cranmore or Black Mountain.On the Whistler and Blackcomb masterplansUnlike the U.S. American Forest Service, which often fails to post ski area master development plans on their useless 1990s vintage websites, the British Columbia authorities have neatly organized all of their province's masterplans on one webpage. Whistler and Blackcomb mountains each file separate plans, last updated in 2013. That predates Vail Resorts' acquisition by three years, and Trembath and I discuss how closely (or not), these plans align with the company's current thinking around the resort.Whistler Mountain:Blackcomb Mountain:On Vail's Australian ski areasTrembath, at different points, oversaw all three of Vail Resorts' Australian ski areas. Though much of that tenure predated Vail's acquisitions (of Hotham and Falls Creek in 2019), she ran Perisher (purchased in 2015), for a year before leaping to the captain's chair at Whistler. Trembath provides a terrific breakdown of each of the three ski areas, and they look like a lot of fun:Perisher:Falls Creek:Hotham:On Sugar Bowl ParallelsTrembath's story follows a similar trajectory to that of Bridget Legnavsky, whose decades-long career in New Zealand included running a pair of that country's largest ski resorts. She then moved to North America to run a large ski area – in her case, Sugar Bowl near Lake Tahoe's North Shore. She appeared on the podcast in March.On Merlin EntertainmentI was unfamiliar with Merlin Entertainment, the former owner of Falls Creek and Hotham. The company is enormous, and owns Legoland Parks, Madame Tussauds, and dozens of other familiar brands.On Whistler and Blackcomb as formerly separate ski areasLike Park City (formerly Park City and Canyons) and Palisades Tahoe (formerly Alpine Meadows and Squaw Valley), Whistler and Blackcomb were once separate ski areas. Here's the stoke version of the mountains' joint history (“You were either a Whistler skier, or you were a Blackcomb skier”):On First Nations' language on lifts and the Gondola Gallery projectAs Whistler builds new lifts, the resort tags the lift terminals with names in English and First Nations languages. From Pique Magazine at the opening of the Fitzsimmons eight-pack last December:Whistler Mountain has a brand-new chairlift ready to ferry keen skiers and snowboarders up to mid-mountain, with the rebuilt Fitzsimmons Express opening to guests early on Dec. 12. …“Importantly, this project could not have happened without the guidance and counsel of the First Nations partners,” said Trembath.“It's so important to us that their culture continues to be represented across these mountains in everything we do.”In keeping with those sentiments, the new Fitzsimmons Express is emblazoned with First Nations names alongside its English name: In the Squamish language, it is known as Sk_wexwnách, for Valley Creek, and in the Lil'wat language, it is known as Tsíqten, which means Fish Spear.New chairlifts are given First Nations names at Whistler Blackcomb as they are installed and opened.Here's Fitzsimmons:And Big Red, a sixer installed two years ago:Whistler also commissioned First Nations artists to wrap two cabins on the Peak 2 Peak Gondola. From Daily Hive:The Peak 2 Peak gondola, which connects Whistler and Blackcomb mountains, is showing off artwork created by First Nations artists, which can be seen by mountain-goers at BC's premiere ski resort.Vail Resorts commissioned local Indigenous artists to redesign two gondola cabins. Levi Nelson of Lil'wat Nation put his stamp on one with “Red,” while Chief Janice George and Buddy Joseph of Squamish Nation have created “Wings of Thunder.” …“Red is a sacred colour within Indigenous culture, representing the lifeblood of the people and our connection to the Earth,” said Nelson, an artist who excels at contemporary Indigenous art. “These shapes come from and are inspired by my ancestors. To be inside the gondola, looking out through an ovoid or through the Ancestral Eye, maybe you can imagine what it's like to experience my territory and see home through my eyes.”“It's more than just the techniques of weaving. It's about ways of being and seeing the world. Passing on information that's meaningful. We've done weavings on murals, buildings, reviving something that was put away all those decades ago now,” said Chief Janice George and Buddy Joseph.“The significance of the Thunderbird being on the gondola is that it brings the energy back on the mountain and watching over all of us.”A pic:On Native American issues in the U.S.I referenced conflicts between U.S. ski resorts and Native Americans, without providing specifics. The Forest Service cited objections from Native American communities, among other factors, in recommending a “no action” alternative to Lutsen Mountains' planned expansion last year. The Washoe tribe has attempted to “reclaim” land that Diamond Peak operates on. The most prominent dispute, however, has been a decades-long standoff between Arizona Snowbowl and indigenous tribes. Per The Guardian in 2022:The Arizona Snowbowl resort, which occupies 777 acres (314 hectares) on the mountain's slope, has attracted skiers during the winter and spring for nearly a century. But its popularity has boomed in recent years thanks to growing populations in Phoenix, a three hour's drive away, and neighbouring Flagstaff. During peak ski season, the resort draws upwards of 3,000 visitors a day.More than a dozen Indigenous nations who hold the mountain sacred have fought Snowbowl's existence since the 1930s. These include the Pueblo of Acoma, Fort McDowell Yavapai; Havasupai; Hopi; Hualapai; Navajo; San Carlos Apache; San Juan Southern Paiute; Tonto Apache; White Mountain Apache; Yavapai Apache, Yavapai Prescott, and Pueblo of Zuni. They say the resort's presence has disrupted the environment and their spiritual connection to the mountain, and that its use of treated sewage effluent to make snow is akin to baptizing a baby with wastewater.Now, a proposed $60m expansion of Snowbowl's facilities has brought simmering tensions to a boil.The US Forest Service, the agency that manages the national forest land on which Snowbowl is built, is weighing a 15-year expansion proposal that would bulk up operations, increase visitation and add new summer recreational facilities such as mountain biking trails, a zip line and outdoor concerts. A coalition of tribes, meanwhile, is resisting in unprecedented ways.The battle is emblematic of a vast cultural divide in the American west over public lands and how they should be managed. On one side are mostly financially well-off white people who recreate in national forests and parks; on the other are Indigenous Americans dispossessed from those lands who are struggling to protect their sacred sites.“Nuva'tukya'ovi is our Mount Sinai. Why can't the forest service understand that?,” asks Preston.On the tight load at the 7th Heaven liftYikes:Honestly it's pretty organized and the wait isn't that long, but this is very popular terrain and the trails could handle a higher-capacity lift (nearly everyone skis the Green Line trail or one of the blue groomers off this lift, leaving hundreds of acres of off-piste untouched; it's pretty glorious).On Wizard and Solar CoasterEvery local I spoke with in Whistler grumped about the Blackcomb Gondola, which replaced the Wizard and Solar Coaster high-speed quads in 2018. While the 10-passenger gondy substantively follows the same lines, it fails to provide the same mid-mountain fast-lap firepower that Solar Coaster once delivered. Both because removing your skis after each lap is a drag, and because many skiers ride the gondola up to Rendezvous, leaving fewer free mid-mountain seats than the empty quad chairs once provided. Here's a before-and-after:On Whistler's season passWhistler's season pass, which is good at Whistler Blackcomb and only Whistler Blackcomb, strangely costs more ($1,047 U.S.) than a full Epic Pass ($1,004 U.S.), which also provides unlimited access to Whistler and Vail's other 41 ski areas. It's weird. Trembath explains.The Storm explores the world of lift-served skiing year-round. Join us.The Storm publishes year-round, and guarantees 100 articles per year. This is article 42/100 in 2024, and number 542 since launching on Oct. 13, 2019. Get full access to The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast at www.stormskiing.com/subscribe

- Mountain Village holds work session to discuss voting eligibility - County welcomes new assistant manager - Ouray International Film Festival makes the global intimate

- Mountain Village prepares for summer tourism - Cornet Creek Trail reopens - Celebrating the Class of 2024

- Mountain Village talks “laundry list” of housing possibilities - A Strong Start towards sustainable childcare - Tailing mitigation continues on the Valley Floor

- Mountain Village debriefs on winter parking - Telluride discusses fees for special events - EMS Week celebrates first responders

- County adjusts zone district, responding to concern - Mountain Village discusses fire mitigation and tree protections - Quilters retreat to Canyon Country

- Mountain Village ofrece elecciones especiales - Las partes interesadas analizan el futuro de la financiación de la góndola - El programa " La granja a la comunidad " vuelve a Mountain Village

- Mountain Village tables special election - Citing cost & wastewater, Telluride Brewing faces big changes - An update from above

- Mountain Village discute la elegibilidad para votar - Grupo local de defensa de latinos viaja a Denver - Los comisionados del condado estudian las normas solares

- Norwood appoints Board of Trustee seats - Mountain Village talks VCA expansion - New director discusses state's art economy

In the second episode in Transforming Energy's Lab Notes series, guest host Molly Rettig takes listeners on a journey to Mountain Village, a Yup'ik community working with NREL researchers to design and build super energy-efficient homes amid the challenges of extreme weather and permafrost. Through local collaboration and innovative research and technology, these efforts not only address pressing housing needs but also empower communities to adapt to the changing climate while preserving their traditional way of life.   Housed in the farthest-north LEED Platinum building in the world, the Applied Research for Communities in Extreme Environments (ARCEE) Center focuses on advancing energy efficiency and renewable energy in extreme climates, addressing Arctic and climate-threatened communities, and expanding NREL's wealth of experience in building technologies. In each project, researchers are working hand in hand with communities to make sure these technologies work for their climate, their economy, and their culture.This episode was hosted by Kerrin Jeromin and Taylor Mankle, written and produced by Allison Montroy and Kaitlyn Stottler, and edited by Joe DelNero and Brittany Falch. Graphics are by Brittnee Gayet. Our title music is written and performed by Ted Vaca and episode music by Chuck Kurnik, Jim Riley, and Mark Sanseverino of Drift BC. Transforming Energy: The NREL Podcast is created by the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado. We express our gratitude and acknowledge that the land we are on is the traditional and ancestral homelands of the Arapaho, Cheyenne, and Ute peoples. Email us at podcast@nrel.gov. Follow NREL on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Facebook.

This podcast hit paid subscribers' inboxes on Jan. 16. It dropped for free subscribers on Jan. 23. To receive future pods as soon as they're live, and to support independent ski journalism, please consider an upgrade to a paid subscription. You can also subscribe to the free tier below:WhoTroy Nedved, General Manager of Big Sky, MontanaRecorded onJanuary 11, 2024About Big SkyClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: Boyne ResortsLocated in: Big Sky, MontanaYear founded: 1973Pass affiliations:* 7 days, no blackouts on Ikon Pass (reservations required)* 5 days, holiday blackouts on Ikon Base and Ikon Base Plus Pass (reservations required)* 2 days, no blackouts on Mountain Collective (reservations required)Reciprocal partners: Top-tier Big Sky season passes include three days each at Boyne's other nine ski areas: Brighton, Summit at Snoqualmie, Cypress, Boyne Mountain, The Highlands, Loon Mountain, Sunday River, Pleasant Mountain, and Sugarloaf.Closest neighboring ski areas: Yellowstone Club (ski-to connection); Bear Canyon (private ski area for Mount Ellis Academy – 1:20); Bridger Bowl (1:30)Base elevation: 6,800 feet at Madison BaseSummit elevation: 11,166 feetVertical drop: 4,350 feetSkiable Acres: 5,850Average annual snowfall: 400-plus inchesTrail count: 300 (18% expert, 35% advanced, 25% intermediate, 22% beginner)Terrain parks: 6Lift count: 38 (1 75-passenger tram, 1 high-speed eight-pack, 3 high-speed six-packs, 4 high-speed quads, 3 fixed-grip quads, 9 triples, 5 doubles, 3 platters, 1 ropetow, 8 carpet lifts – Big Sky also recently announced a second eight-pack, to replace the Six Shooter six-pack, next year; and a new, two-stage gondola, which will replace the Explorer double chair for the 2025-26 ski season – View Lift Blog's inventory of Big Sky's lift fleet.)View vintage Big Sky trailmaps on skimap.org.Why I interviewed himBig Sky is the closest thing American skiing has to the ever-stacking ski circuses of British Columbia. While most of our western giants labor through Forest Service approvals for every new snowgun and trail sign, BC transforms Revelstoke and Kicking Horse and Sun Peaks into three of the largest ski resorts on the continent in under two decades. These are policy decisions, differences in government and public philosophies of how to use our shared land. And that's fine. U.S. America does everything in the most difficult way possible, and there's no reason to believe that ski resort development would be any different.Except in a few places in the West, it is different. Deer Valley and Park City and Schweitzer sit entirely (or mostly), on private land. New project approvals lie with local entities. Sometimes, locals frustrate ski areas' ambitions, as is the case in Park City, which cannot, at the moment, even execute simple lift replacements. But the absence of a federal overlord is working just fine at Big Sky, where the mountain has evolved from Really Good to Damn Is This Real in less time than it took Aspen to secure approvals for its 153-acre Hero's expansion.Boyne has pulled similar stunts at its similarly situated resorts across the country: Boyne Mountain and The Highlands in Michigan and Sunday River in Maine, each of them transforming in Hollywood montage-scene fashion. Progress has lagged more at Brighton and Alpental, both of which sit at least partly on Forest Service land (though change has been rapid at Loon Mountain in New Hampshire, whose land is a public-private hybrid). But the evolution at Big Sky has been particularly comprehensive. And, because of the ski area's inherent drama and prominence, compelling. It's America's look-what-we-can-do-if-we-can-just-do mountain. The on-mountain product is better for skiers and better for skiing, a modern mountain that eases chokepoints and upgrades facilities and spreads everyone around.Winter Park, seated on Forest Service land, owned by the City of Denver, and operated by Alterra Mountain Company, outlined an ambitious master development plan in 2005 (when Intrawest ran the ski area). Proposed projects included a three-stage gondola connecting the town of Winter Park with the ski area's base village, a massive intermediate-focused expansion onto Vasquez Ridge, and a new mid-mountain beginner area. Nearly 20 years later, none of it exists. Winter Park did execute some upgrades in the meantime, building a bunch of six-packs and adding lift redundancy and access to the high alpine. But the mountain's seven lift upgrades in 19 years are underwhelming compared to the 17 such projects that have remade Big Sky over that same time period. Winter Park has no lack of resources, skier attention, or administrative will, but its plans stall anyway, and it's no mystery why.I write more about Big Sky than I do about other large North American ski resorts because there is more happening at Big Sky than at any other large North American ski resort. That is partly luck and partly institutional momentum and partly a unique historical collision of macroeconomic, cultural, and technological factors that favor construction and evolution of what a ski resort is and can be. And, certainly, U.S. ski resorts build big projects on Forest Service land every single year. But Boyne and Big Sky, operating outside of the rulebooks hemming in their competitors, are getting to the future a hell of a lot faster than anyone else.What we talked aboutYes a second eight-pack is coming to Big Sky; why the resort is replacing the 20-year-old Six Shooter lift; potential future Headwaters lift upgrades; why the resort will replace Six Shooter before adding a second lift out of the Madison base; what will happen to Six Shooter and why it likely won't land elsewhere in Boyne's portfolio; the logic of selling, rather than scrapping, lifts to competitors; adjusting eight-packs for U.S. Americans; automated chairlift safety bars; what happened when the old Ramcharger quad moved to Shedhorn; what's up with the patrol sled marooned in a tree off Shedhorn?; the philosophy of naming lifts; why we won't see the Taco Bell tram anytime soon (or ever); the One & Only gondola; Big Sky's huge fleet of real estate lifts; how the new tram changed Big Sky; metering traffic up the Lone Peak tram; the tram's shift from pay-per-day to pay-per-ride; a double carpet; that new double-blue-square rating on the trailmap; Black Hills skiing at Terry Peak and Deer Mountain; working in Yellowstone; river kayaking culture; revisiting the coming out-of-base gondola; should Swifty have been an eight-pack?; on-mountain employee housing; Big Sky 2025; what does the resort that's already upgraded everything upgrade next?; potential future lift upgrades; and the Ikon Pass.Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewI didn't plan to record two Big Sky podcasts in two months. I prefer to spread my attention across mountains and across regions and across companies, as most of you know. This podcast was scheduled for early December, after an anticipated Thanksgiving-week tram opening. But then the tram was delayed, and as it happened I was able to attend the grand opening on Dec. 19. I recorded a podcast there, with Nedved and past Storm Skiing Podcast guests Taylor Middleton (Big Sky president) and Stephen Kircher (Boyne Resorts CEO).But Nedved and I kept this conversation on the calendar, pushing it into January. It's a good thing. Because no sooner had Big Sky opened its spectacular new tram than it announced yet another spectacular new lift: a second eight-pack chair, to replace a six-pack that is exactly 21 years old.There's a sort of willful showiness to such projects. Who, in America, can even afford a six-person chairlift, let alone have the resources to tag such a machine for the rubbish bin? And then replace it with a lift so spectacular that its ornamentation exceeds that of your six-year-old Ramcharger eight-seater, still dazzling on the other side of the mountain?When Vail built 18 new lifts in 2022, the projects ended up as all function, no form. They were effective, and well-placed, but the lifts are just lifts. Boyne Resorts, which, while a quarter the size of Vail, has built dozens of new lifts over the past decade, is building more than just people-movers. Its lifts are experiences, housed in ski shrines, buildings festooned in speakers and screens, the carriers descending like coaster trains at Six Flags, bubbles and heaters and sportscar seats and conveyors, a spectacle you might ride even if skiing were not attached at the end.American skiing will always have room for throwbacks and minimalism, just as American cuisine will always have room for Taco Bell and small-town diners. Most Montana ski areas are fixed-grip and funky – Snowbowl and Bridger and Great Divide and Discovery and Lost Trail and Maverick and Turner. Big Sky's opportunity was, at one time, to be a bigger, funkier version of these big, funky ski areas. But its opportunity today is to be the not-Colorado, not-Utah alt destination for skiers seeking comfort sans megacrowds. The mountain is fulfilling that mission, at a speed that is almost impossible to believe. Which is why we keep going back there, over and over again.What I got wrongI said several times that the Six Shooter lift was “only 20 years old.” In fact, Moonlight installed the lift in 2003, making the machine legal drinking age.Why you should ski Big SkyThe approach is part of the experience, always. Some ski areas smash the viewshed with bandoliers of steepshots slicing across the ridge. From miles down the highway you say whoa. Killington or Hunter or Red Lodge. Others hide. Even from the parking lot you see only suggestions of skiing. Caberfae in Michigan is like this, enormous trees mask its runs and its peaks. Mad River Glen erupts skyward but its ragged clandestine trail network resembles nothing else in the East and you wonder where it is. Unfolding, then, as you explore. Even vast Heavenly, from the gondola base, is invisible.Big Sky, alone among American ski areas, inspires awe on the approach. Turn west up 64 from 191 and Lone Peak commands the horizon. This place is not like other places you realize. On the long road up you pass the spiderwebbing trails off the Lone Moose and Thunder Wolf lifts and still that summit towers in the distance. There is a way to get up there and a way to ski down but from below it's all invisible. All you can see is snow and rocks and avy chutes flushed out over millennia.That's the marquee and that's the post: I'm here. But Lone Peak, with its triple black diamonds and sign-in sheets and muscled exposure, is not for mortal hot laps. Go up, yes. Ski down, yes. But then explore. Because staple Keystone to Breck and you have roughly one Big Sky.Humans cluster. Even in vast spaces. Or perhaps especially so. The cut trails below Ramcharger and Swifty swarm like train stations. But break away from the salmon run, into the trees or the bowl or the gnarled runs below the liftlines, and emerge into a different world. Everywhere, empty lifts, empty glades, endless crags and crannies. Greens and blues that roll for miles. Beyond every chairlift, another chairlift. Stacked like bonus levels are what feel like mini ski areas existing for you alone. An empty endless. A skiing fantasyland.Podcast NotesOn Uncle Dan's CookiesFear not: this little shack seated beside the Six Shooter lift is not going anywhere:On Moonlight Basin and Spanish PeaksLike the largest (Park City) and second-largest (Palisades Tahoe) ski areas in America, Big Sky is the stapled-together remains of several former operations. Unlike those two giants, which connected two distinct ski areas with gondolas (Park City and Canyons; Squaw Valley and Alpine Meadows), seamless ski connections existed between the former Spanish Peaks terrain, on the ski area's far southern end, and the former Moonlight Basin, on the northern end. The circa 2010 trailmaps called out access points between each of the bookend resorts and Big Sky, which you could ski with upgraded lift tickets:Big Sky purchased the properties in 2013, a few years after this happened (per the Bozeman Daily Chronicle):Moonlight Basin, meanwhile, got into trouble after borrowing $100 million from Lehman Brothers in September 2007, with the 7,800-acre resort, its ski lifts, condos, spa and a Jack Nicklaus-designed golf course put up as collateral, according to foreclosure records filed in Madison County.That loan came due in September 2008, according to the papers filed by Lehman, and Moonlight defaulted. Lehman itself went bankrupt in September 2008 and blamed its troubles on a collapse in the real estate market that left it upside down.An outfit called Crossharbor Capital Partners, which purchased and still owns the neighboring Yellowstone Club, eventually joined forces with Big Sky to buy Moonlight and Spanish Peaks (Crossharbor is no longer a partner). Now, just imagine tacking the 2,900-acre Yellowstone Club onto Big Sky's current footprint (which you can in fact do if you're a Yellowstone Club member):On the sled chilling in the tree off ShedhornYes, there's a patrol sled lodged in a tree off the Shedhorn high-speed quad. Here's a pic I snagged from the lift last spring:Explore Big Sky last year recounted the avalanche that deposited the sled there:“In Big Sky and around Montana, ['96 and '97] has never been topped in terms of snowfall,” [veteran Big Sky ski patroller Mike] Buotte said. Unfortunately, a “killer ice layer on the bottom of the snowpack” caused problems in the tram's second season. On Christmas Day, 1996, a patroller died in an explosive accident near the summit of Lone Mountain. Buotte says it was traumatic for the entire team.The next morning, patrol triggered a “wall-to-wall” avalanche across Lenin and the Dictator Chutes. The slide infamously took out the Shedhorn chairlift, leaving scars still visible today. Buotte and another patroller were caught in that avalanche. Miraculously, they both stopped. Had they “taken the ride,” Buotte is confident they would not have survived.“That second year, the reality of what's going on really hit us,” Buotte said. “And it was not fun and games. It was pretty dark, frankly. That's when it got very real for the organization and for me. The industry changed; avalanche training changed. We had to up our game. It was a new paradigm.”Buotte said patrol changed the Lenin route's design—adding more separation in time and space—and applied the same learning to other routes. Mitigation work is inherently dangerous, but Buotte believes the close call helped emphasize the importance of route structure to reduce risk.Here's Boutte recalling the incident:On the Ski the Sky loopBig Sky gamified a version of their trailmap to help skiers understand that there's more to the mountain than Ramcharger and Swifty:On the bigness of Big SkyNedved points out that several major U.S. destination ski areas total less than half Big Sky's 5,850 acres. That would be 2,950 acres, which is, indeed, more than Breckenridge (2,908 acres), Schweitzer (2,900), Alta (2,614), Crystal (2,600), Snowbird (2,500), Jackson Hole (2,500), Copper Mountain (2,465), Beaver Creek (2,082), Sun Valley (2,054), Deer Valley (2,026), or Telluride (2,000).On the One & Only resort and brandWe discuss the One & Only resort company, which is building a super-luxe facility that they will connect to the Madison base with a D-line gondola. Which is an insane investment for a transportation lift. As far as I can tell, this will be the company's first facility in the United States. Here's a list of their existing properties.On the Big Sky TramI won't break down the new Lone Peak tram here, because I just did that a month ago.On the Black HillsSouth Dakota's Black Hills, where Nedved grew up, are likely not what most Americans envision when they think of South Dakota. It's a gorgeous, mountainous region that is home to Mount Rushmore, the Crazy Horse monument, and 7,244-foot Black Elk Peak (formerly Harney Peak), the highest point in the United States east of the Rockies. This is a tourist bureau video, but it will make you say wait Brah where are all the cornfields?The Black Hills are home to two ski areas. The first it Terry Peak, an 1,100-footer with three high-speed quads that is an Indy Pass OG:The second is Deer Mountain, which disappeared for around six years before an outfit called Keating Resources bought the joint last year and announced they would bring it back as a private ski area for on-mountain homeowners. They planned a large terrain reduction to accommodate more housing. I put this revised trailmap together last year based upon a conversation with the organization's president, Alec Keating:The intention, Keating told me in July, was to re-open the East Side (top of the map above), for this ski season, and the West side (bottom portion) in 2025. I've yet to see evidence of the ski area having opened, however.On Troy the athleteWe talk a bit about Nedved's kayaking adventures, but that barely touches on his action-sports resume. From a 2019 Explore Big Sky profile:Nedved lived in a teepee in Gardiner for two years down on the banks of the Yellowstone River across from the Yellowstone Raft Company, where he developed world-class abilities as a kayaker.“The culture around rafting and kayaking is pretty heavy and I connected with some of the folks around there that were pretty into it. That was the start of that,” Nedved said of his early days in the park. “My Yellowstone days, I spent all my time when I was not working on the water.” And even when he was working, and someone needed to brave a stretch of Class V rapids for a rescue mission or body recovery, he was the one for the job.When Teton Gravity Research started making kayak movies, Nedved and his friends got the call as well. “We were pioneering lines that had never been done before: in Costa Rica and Nepal, but also stretches of river in Montana in the Crazy Mountains of Big Timber Creek and lots of runs in Beartooths that had never been floated,” Nedved recounted.“We spent a lot of time looking at maps, hiking around the mountains, finding stuff that was runnable versus not. It was a stage of kayaking community in Montana that we got started. Now the next generation of these kids is blowing my mind—doing things that we didn't even think was possible.”Nedved is an athlete's athlete. “I love competing in just about anything. When I was first in Montana, I found out about Powder 8s at Bridger Bowl. It was a cool event and we got into it,” he said in a typically modest way. “It was just another thing to hone your skills as a ski instructor and a skiing professional.”Nedved has since won the national Powder 8 competition five times and competed on ESPN at the highest level of the niche sport in the Powder 8 World Championships held at Mike Wiegele's heliskiing operation in Canada. Even some twenty years later, he is still finding podiums in the aesthetically appealing alpine events with longtime partner Nick Herrin, currently the CEO of the Professional Ski Instructors of America. Nedved credits his year-round athletic pursuits for what keeps him in the condition to still make perfect turns.Sadly, I was unable to locate any videos of Nedved kayaking or Powder 8ing.On employee housing at Big Sky and Winter ParkBig Sky has built an incredible volume of employee housing (more than 1,000 beds in the Mountain Village alone). The most impressive may be the Levinski complex: fully furnished, energy-efficient buildings situated within walking distance of the lifts.Big mountain skiing, wracked and wrecked by traffic and mountain-town housing shortages, desperately needs more of this sort of investment, as I wrote last week after Winter Park opened a similarly situated project.On Big Sky 2025Big Sky 2025 will, in substance, wrap when the new two-stage, out-of-base gondola opens next year. Here's the current iteration of the plan. You can see how much it differs from the version outlined in 2016 in this contemporary Lift Blog post.The Storm explores the world of lift-served skiing year-round. Join us.The Storm publishes year-round, and guarantees 100 articles per year. This is article 2/100 in 2024, and number 502 since launching on Oct. 13, 2019. Get full access to The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast at www.stormskiing.com/subscribe